Luke LeGrand and Sean Vidal had a pretty good idea they would make decent playing partners when they asked to play together in the Penick Cup Matches on last year’s Alamo City Golf Trail Tour. When they hit a 7-iron into the 18th green and converted that approach into a birdie that halved a match in the Penick Cup, they knew they could carry their game into future competitive events.

“We were pretty vocal about playing together,” LeGrand remembers. “We feel we’re both pretty clutch,” and, says Vidal, “We count on each other enough that we aren’t worried about pressing in our games.”

The format was 6-6-6, where teams play six holes of scramble, six holes of better-ball and the final six of alternate shot.

LeGrand and Vidal had a strong kick on the back nine started with a hole-out from a bunker on the par-5 12th.

“We went off after that,” LeGrand said.

They birdied the 15th through the 17th in the alternate-shot format. It matched the Championship Flight winning score from last year’s Brack 6-6-6 event shot by John Pierce and Pat Youngs in cold, blustery conditions.

Expect the pairing of LeGrand, a commercial real-estate agent, and Vidal, an elementary-school teacher, to stay together.

“I’ve played with a couple of other guys, and I wanted someone I could count on to play in more tournaments this year,” said Vidal, voted the ACGT Tour Player of the Year two seasons ago. “And I actually think Luke helps me better than I help him. I can get down on myself, and he keeps me thinking positively.”

Other highlights from the 2014 opener on the ACGT Tour include:

The first hole-in-one since ACGT Tour play began in 2012 when Joe Hernandez in the First Flight aced No. 8, which Tour officials estimated played 175-180 yards on Saturday;

Pace of play that came in at 4 hours, 10 minutes, according to ACGT Tour commissioner Travis Salkowski. That’s an improvement of one hour from last year’s reported average on the Tour.